My product is…My Business!
If I was to ask you - what is your product, what would you say? Would you tell me about the product or service that your business provides? I would say that my product is my business itself. I would also say that the customers for my product are not the consumers who buy the services or product that my business provides rather they are the other businesses out there that I could sell my business to. This is one of the main reasons why I am so passionate about entrepreneurship and business development. The thought of creating a business that I can sell is so exciting to me.
This approach to entrepreneurship does assume that the business is innovative, efficient, and competes in a lucrative industry. Knowing this, the focus on the business then will be to adopt a Business Format Franchise model that Michael Gerber describes in his book - The E-Myth. This model focuses the entrepreneur to think of building a business as a franchise with the goal of attracting franchisees (your customers) who would want to buy into your business or better yet, buy it from you.
In my previous post - So what if others know about your idea? - I mentioned that part of the reason why we are sometimes afraid to share our ideas is because we think that bigger corporations would steal them. However, one thing I didn’t mention in the post is that there is a tendency for large corporations to buy promising businesses rather than copy the idea and implement it themselves. Just last week, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that IBM bought Chicago-based health care technology firm Initiate Systems. Initiate Systems had successfully implemented solutions for electronic medical records. IBM in an apparent move to serve this lucrative health care technology industry decided to buy rather than build their own solution.
Treating your business as your product can take you a step towards creating a great business that hopefully you can exit from - just like the folks over at Initiate Systems - with enough money and satisfaction to start another one. That is my goal at least!
